Postcolonial Studies Reading List

 

 

*Required Readings

 

*Achebe, Chinua.  Things Fall Apart

*Aidoo, Ama Ata.  Our Sister Killjoy: of, Reflections From a Black-Eyed Squint

*Armah, Ayi Kwei.  The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born

*Arundhati, Roy.  The God of Small Things

*Bennet, Louise.  “Bans O’Ooman!,” “Registration,” “Dutty Tough,” “Colonisation in Reverse,” “Dry Foot Bwoy,” “No Lickle Twang!,” “Pass fe White,” “Back to Africa,” “Bans O’Killing,” “My Dream,” “Jamaica Elevate,” “Colour-Bar”

*Brand, Dionne.  no languge is neutral

*Brathwaite, Edward Kamau.  The Arrivants

*Breeze, Jean Binta.  Riddym Ravings and Other Poems

*Cliff, Michelle.  No Telephone to Heaven

*Coetzee, D.M.  Waiting for the Barbarians

*Emecheta, Buchi.  The Joys of Motherhood

*Ghosh, Amitav.  The Shadow Lines

*Gordimer, Nadine.  The Burgher’s Daughter

*Goodison, Lorna.  Heartease

*Head, Bessie.  The Collector of Treasures

*Hodge, Merle.  Crick Crack, Monkey

*Johnson, Linton Kwesi.  Tings an Times

*Kincaid, Jamaica.  Annie John

*Kureishi, Hanif.  My Beautiful Laundrette

*Lamming, George.  In the Castle of My Skin

*Lovelace, Earl.  The Wine of Astonishment

*Naipaul, V.S.  Mimic Men

*Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  Weep not, Child

*Okri, Ben.  The Famished Road

*Rhone, Trevor.  Old Story Time and Other Plays

*Rushdie, Salman.  Midnight’s Children

*Selvon, Sam.  Moses Ascending

*Soyinka, Wole.  The Beautification of Area Boy

*Walcott, Derek.  The Castaway and Other Poems, Dream on Monkey Mountain

 

 

For Further Reading

Fiction/Poetry/Drama

 

Achebe, Chinua.  No Longer at Ease

Aidoo, Ama Ata.  The Dilemma of a Ghost

Alexander, Meena.  Nampally Road

Brodber, Erna.  Jane and Louise Will Soon Come Home, Louisiana

Cliff, Michelle.  Abeng

Coetzee, D.M.  Foe

Dabydeen, David.  Coolie Odyssey

Desai, Anita.  Bramgartner’s Bombay, Clear Light of Day

Emecheta, Buchi.  Second Class Citizen

Espinet, Ramabai.  Nuclear Seasons: Poems

Ghosh, Amitav.  The Circle of Reason

Goodison, Lorna.  Baby Mother and the King of Swords

Head, Bessie.  A Question of Power

Kincaid, Jamaica.  Lucy

Kureishi, Hanif.  The Black Album

Lovelace, Earl.  The Dragon Can’t Dance

Mehta, Ved.  The Ledge Between the Streams

Monar, Rooplall.  Koker

Naipaul, V.S.  A House for Mr. Biswas,

Namjoshi, Suniti.  The Mothers of Maya Diip

Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  Petals of Blood

Nichols, Grace.  I is a long memoried woman

Okara, Gabriel.  The Fisherman’s Invocation

Ondaatje, Michael.  Running in the Family

Persaud, Lakshmi.  Butterfly in the Wind

Philip, Marlene Nourbese.  She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

Phillips, Caryl.  Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River

Rhys, Jean.  Wide Sargasso Sea

Rushdie, Salman.  Shame, The Satanic Verses

Salkey, Andrew.  Anancy Traveller

Saro-Wiwa, Ken.  Sozaboy

Scott, Dennis.  Strategies

Selvon, Sam.  The Lonely Londoners

Senior, Olive.  Summer Lightening, Arrival of the Snakewoman and Other Stories

Shinebourne, Janice.  The Last English Plantation

Sistern Theatre.  Lionheart Gal: Life Stories of Jamaican Women

Soyinka, Wole.  The Interpreters

Tutuola, Amos.  The Palm-Wine Drinkard

Walcott, Derek.  The Gulf, Other Poems, Omeros

Zephaniah, Benjamin.  City Psalms

 

 

Theory

 

Ashcroft, Bill, et al. eds.  The Empire Writes Back:  Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures

Bhabha, Homi K.  The Location of Culture

Brathwaite, Edward.  History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry

Brand, Dionne.  Sight Specific: Lesbians and Representation

Cabril, Amilcar.  National Liberation and Culture

Chatterjee, Partha.  Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World:  A Derivative Discourse?

Chinweizu.  Towards the Decolonization of African Literature

Coetzee, J.M.  White Writing

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, Studies in a Dying Colonialism

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.  “Race,” Writing and Difference

Glissant, Edouard.  Caribbean Discourse

Guha, Ranajit.  Selected Subaltern Studies

James, C.L.R.  Beyond a Boundary

Lamming, George.  The Pleasures of Exile

Mannoni, O.  Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization

Memmi, Albert.  The Colonizer and the Colonized

Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

Pratt, Mary Louise.  Imperial Eyes: Transculturation

Rushdie, Salman.  Imaginary Homelands

Saakana, Amon Saba.  The Colonial Legacy in Caribbean Literature

Said, Edward.  Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.  Outside in the Teaching Machine

Walcott, Derek.  “The Muse of History,” The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory

Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman, eds.  Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory